I can’t get over how bloody minded the government and public service in Malaysia have become. The recent spate of arrests enraged me so much that even though I am now in Melbourne, Australia, I telephoned an ex-boss, who is the senior partner of a law firm in Kuala Lumpur.

I wanted to reach out and extend the camaraderie and express my disbelief over the behaviour of the government. They tried to oppose bail for Edmund Bon. This is outrageous and clearly demonstrates how the attorney-general (AG) or the deputy public prosecutor (DPP) continues to be anything but independent of the ruling party.

Where is the objectivity? On the one hand, bail was granted for a murder accused. Razak Baginda was charged with murder in a very high profile case and they initially allowed him to roam free on bail. On the other hand, Edmund Bon has to contest the might of the AG or DPP to get bail, in what is at best a misdemeanour. It enraged me.

All lawyers should react to this in the strongest possible manner. Justice and fairness must be the bedrock of any effective legal administration system. You can be the flashest corporate lawyer and be a whizz kid in terms of the intricacies of structuring complex corporate finance deals, appreciating every aspect of the legal risks associated with every feature of the deal.

If you have a Mickey Mouse judiciary such as the one bedevilling Malaysia, you might as well write an ‘IOU’ on a napkin of a coffee shop and a handshake. No whizz-bang-you-beauty suite of contracts is going to save you from a corrupt and clueless bench.

The demonstrations against the administration are therefore well-justified. The Star’s Wong Chun Wai cannot legitimately condemn the lawyer, unless he is content with writing propaganda instead of op-ed.

For far too long, the executive branch of the government in Malaysia has been playing fast and loose with the judiciary, twirling the sad little judges around the fingers of the ministers, business leaders and even lawyers. What sort of integrity can this sort of judiciary have? The lawyers’ recent action was wrong only in terms of timing – they should have done this years ago.